Bento #33: Chicken & Black Bean Rice

Sometimes, lucky accidents happen. That's the term I'm using for tonight's dinner which turns into tomorrow's bento leftovers.

In my quest to eat healthier and try new things, I purchased some black beans at the Asian food store. While searching for recipes, I found a few that mentioned mixing the black beans with jasmine rice. Here's what I did.

First, I boiled the black beans for about 2 hours, periodically adding water to ensure they were covered at all times. I also stirred them alot ot make sure nothing stuck to the pot. They cooked up very nicely. My only complaint is that I should have thrown in some onion or garlic with them to give them some flavor. The salt I threw in the pot didn't do much for them.

Then, I cooked some jasmine rice. Once done, I thre it into a large skillet with a bit of melted margarine to sort-of-but-not-really stir fry the rice. I added in the black beans and then some toasted black sesame seeds. I also added a garlic black pepper seasoning blend. All in all it was tasty enough, but needed more seasoning.

This is included into tomorrow's bento with balsamic vinaigrette chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, sliced cucumber, and sesame seed candy.

Bento No and Bento Yes

The bento below I made with leftover chicken I had cooked for a panini sandwich. Which came out wonderfully btw. However, this bento never ended up seeing the inside of my lunch bag. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend of mine and I went to P.F. Chang's for lunch over the weekend, and I came home with leftovers. After my lunch at P.F. Chang's, I had a major case of CRASH! My body needed sleep. I could tell I had eaten something that was setting off the insulin problem, but couldn't figure out what. I'd eaten carefully at Chang's, didn't overeat, and was carefuly on the portions of carbs. That night, I had a small portion of the noodles below with some chicken. I felt that same crashing feeling. I realized it must be these noodles. They were tasty enough, but were sort of thick and floury tasting to me. I think they simply overwhelmed my system. I'm sorry to say I ended up disposing of them.

So the rest of the bento was recycled into a new bento that I enjoyed immensely on Monday. This bento consisted of leftover fried rice (which I was fine with), leftover chicken from a panini sandwich I had made (yummy tasting), cucumber, carrots, and a jello cup.